Is the 2018 Democratic Wave Receding?

The Donkey Party awaits a wave that’s still likely but too far in the distance to discern clearly.

In America’s hothouse political environment, people overreact to single events all the time. The latest special election or primary; the latest poll; the latest over-the-top boast or cry of panic from a party leader — you can be sure multiple confident predictions of future political trends will emanate from multiple voices, only to be ignored or walked back when the next big thing happens.

There already seems to be an overreaction under way to the results of four state primaries on May 8, and especially to a potential Republican catastrophe that did not occur: a West Virginia Senate nomination for renegade ex-con and all-around eccentric Don Blankenship. Yes, had Blankenship won, Democrats’ slim chances of defying one of the worst Senate landscapes in history and taking back control of that chamber would have gone up significantly. And Republicans are now moving the goalposts to make Senate control part of the definition of a successful year for the Donkey Party, as shown by this remark from conservative activist Terry Schilling:

For the Democrats to truly ride a “blue wave”, they would need to recapture both the House and the Senate. And, despite the hype, math is not on their side for either objective.

Now Axios seems to be accepting that dubious premise in a piece with the highly suggestive headline: “Reality Check: Anti-Trump Midterm Wave Could Be More of a Ripple”:

[The midterms] probably won’t be a wave of historic proportions, based on Cook Political Report’s latest predictions. At best, it could allow [Democrats] to win the House while barely shifting the Senate at all.

There’s no universally accepted definition of a “wave election,” but every definition is usually characterized by party gains, not some arbitrary objective like control of one or both congressional chambers. The most frequently cited definition of a “wave” is from veteran election forecaster Stu Rothenberg: an election where there is a net gain or loss of 20 House seats. He doesn’t include Senate seats in his definition at all, for the very good reason that only a third of that chamber is at stake in any given election, which means the partisan landscape can vary enormously. The one for 2018 is so bad for Democrats that actual losses this year are entirely consistent with a national “wave” that delivers the House gavel to Nancy Pelosi, as David Wasserman recently pointed out:

So it makes sense to put the Senate aside in discussions of a November “wave” or “trickle” for Democrats.

The other phenomenon to which there has arguably been an overreaction has been the positive shift for Republicans in early 2018 in both the president’s approval ratings (a big factor in shaping midterm “waves”) and in the generic congressional ballot (the poll question simply asking voters which party they want to control the House) as compared to the last quarter of 2017. In retrospect, those terrible numbers for Trump (approval ratings down into the 30s) and his party (frequently a double-digit deficit in the generic ballot) were a brief departure from a relatively stable public opinion landscape that have made a reversion to the mean look exciting to Republicans.

From a longer perspective, things look different. Trump’s approval ratings have not, so far, made some sort of ever-ascending climb, as Nate Silver noted earlier this week:

[O]ver the whole course of his presidency, the range Trump’s approval ratings travel in has been remarkably narrow …

Trump’s 8-point approval-rating range is the narrowest of any [post-World War II] president to this point in his term.

And as Alan Abramowitz pointed out this week, the same is true of the generic ballot:

On average, Democrats led by 7.1 points over the past year, and Democrats have led in almost every individual poll. The monthly average ranged from 6.2 points in February 2018 to 10.1 points in December 2017. The December result was clearly an outlier, however, and may have led to a misinterpretation of more recent results as indicating a significant decline in the Democratic lead. Except for the December results, the monthly averages have fallen within a fairly narrow range of 6.2 to 7.8 points.

Experts vary on how big a national House popular vote (the measurement that the generic ballot approximates) margin Democrats would need either to reach Rothenberg’s 20-net-House-seat-gain standard for a “wave” election, or the 23-net-House-seat-gain they’d need to take over the chamber. Abramowitz thinks a Democratic advantage as small as four points could flip the House. Wasserman thinks it might require more like 7 percent.

All these theories about the election landscape from 30,000 feet must eventually play out in individual races, and a lot of Republican hopes ride on the idea that incumbency and gerrymandering will save the House for them even if they lose the national House popular vote decisively. These very real GOP assets, however, have been eroded by a near-record wave of GOP retirements and by the stunning Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that rewrote the map for that heavily gerrymandered state in a way that significantly improves the odds for big Democratic gains.

More importantly, there are simply a lot more ripe Republican than Democratic targets as we approach the general election season, a warning sign that is highly consistent with “wave” election dynamics that tilt the playing field and create more competitive districts in previously safe territory. According to the Cook Political Report’s House ratings, of the 59 genuinely competitive races, 54 are currently held by Republicans and just five by Democrats.

Republicans aren’t the only ones, however, who are in danger of overreacting to positive news that may be less significant than they think. The great talisman for Democrats heading toward November has been the consistent over-performance of their candidates in special elections, which suggests to some that the polls aren’t adequately capturing Democratic “enthusiasm.” While there is historically a significant correlation between House special elections and subsequent regular elections, there is some reason to wonder if Democrats will be able to maintain their “enthusiasm gap” in the context of regular midterm elections in which key components of their coalition (young people and Latinos, in particular) have traditionally failed to vote in numbers proportionate to the older white voters now leaning Republican. And there is another whole set of questions about polls and “enthusiasm,” though 2018 polls that screen out voters who did not participate in the pro-GOP 2010 and 2014 midterms could overestimate GOP odds in a big way.

The bottom line is that we all need to buckle up for the long haul and exhibit some patience in figuring out what this election cycle will produce. A Democratic “wave” that flips or nearly flips the House and minimizes Senate losses is still the best bet. Overreaction to one poll or one primary is still going to happen, of course, but it makes about as much sense as just flipping a coin.

As we anticipate the end of Mueller, signs of a wind-down:-SCO prosecutors bringing family into the office for visits-Staff carrying out boxes-Manafort sentenced, top prosecutor leaving-office of 16 attys down to 10-DC US Atty stepping up in cases-grand jury not seen in 2mo

For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.

Sometimes these optional features involve aesthetics or comfort, like premium seating, fancy lighting or extra bathrooms. But other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the plane’s operations.

Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesia’s Lion Air, have opted not to buy them — and regulators don’t require them. Now, in the wake of the two deadly crashes involving the same jet model, Boeing will make one of those safety features standard as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again.

… Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another.

Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes, according to a person familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy.

Attorneys for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and more than a dozen other defendants charged in a Florida prostitution sting filed a motion to stop the public release of surveillance videos and other evidence taken by police.

Attorneys filed the motion Wednesday in Palm Beach County court. The State of Florida does not agree with the request, according to the filing.

In the motion, the attorneys asked the court to grant a protective order to safeguard the confidentiality of the materials seized from the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, and “in particular the videos, until further order of the court.”

Two years in, White House aides are dismayed to discover the president likes lobbing pointless, nasty attacks at people like George Conway and John McCain

But the saga has left even White House aides accustomed to a president who bucks convention feeling uncomfortable. While the controversies may have pushed aside some bad news, they also trampled on Trump’s Wednesday visit to an army tank manufacturing plant in swing state Ohio.

“For the most part, most people internally don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole,” said one former senior White House official. A current senior White House official said White House aides are making an effort “not to discuss it in polite company.” Another current White House official bemoaned the tawdry distraction. “It does not appear to be a great use of our time to talk about George Conway or dead John McCain. … Why are we doing this?

When Mr. Trump was running for president, he promised to personally stop American companies from shutting down factories and moving plants abroad, warning that he would punish them with public backlash and higher taxes. Many companies scrambled to respond to his Twitter attacks, announcing jobs and investments in the United States — several of which never materialized.

But despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to compel companies to build and hire, they appear to be increasingly prioritizing their balance sheets over political backlash.

“I don’t think there’s as much fear,” said Gene Grabowski, who specializes in crisis communications for the public relations firm Kglobal. “At first it was a shock to the system, but now we’ve all adjusted. We take it in stride, and I think that’s what the business community is doing.”

There’s no specific stipulation that Milo must be heard, so it could be worse

President Trump is expected to issue an executive order Thursday directing federal agencies to tie research and education grants made to colleges and universities to more aggressive enforcement of the First Amendment, according to a draft of the order viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The order instructs agencies including the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Defense to ensure that public educational institutions comply with the First Amendment, and that private institutions live up to their own stated free-speech standards.

The order falls short of what some university officials feared would be more sweeping or specific measures; it doesn’t prescribe any specific penalty that would result in schools losing research or other education grants as a result of specific policies.

Tech companies say that it is easier to identify content related to known foreign terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda because of information-sharing with law enforcement and industry-wide efforts, such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group formed by YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter in 2017.

On Monday, for example, YouTube said on its Twitter account that it was harder for the company to stop the video of the shootings in Christchurch than to remove copyrighted content or ISIS-related content because YouTube’s tools for content moderation rely on “reference files to work effectively.” Movie studios and record labels provide reference files in advance and, “many violent extremist groups, like ISIS, use common footage and imagery,” YouTube wrote.

The cycle is self-reinforcing: The companies collect more data on what ISIS content looks like based on law enforcement’s myopic and under-inclusive views, and then this skewed data is fed to surveillance systems, Bloch-Wehba says. Meanwhile, consumers don’t have enough visibility in the process to know whether these tools are proportionate to the threat, whether they filter too much content, or whether they discriminate against certain groups, she says.

Two mystery litigants citing privacy concerns are making a last-ditch bid to keep secret some details in a lawsuit stemming from wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s history of paying underage girls for sex.

Just prior to a court-imposed deadline Tuesday, two anonymous individuals surfaced to object to the unsealing of a key lower-court ruling in the case, as well as various submissions by the parties.

Both people filed their complaints in the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which is overseeing the case. The two people said they could face unwarranted speculation and embarrassment if the court makes public records from the suit, in which Virginia Giuffre, an alleged Epstein victim, accused longtime Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell of engaging in sex trafficking by facilitating his sexual encounters with teenage girls. Maxwell has denied the charges.

Rescue teams in Mozambique are struggling to reach the thousands of people stranded on roofs and in trees and urgently need more helicopters and boats as post-cyclone flood waters continue to rise.

Rescue workers, military personnel and volunteers are rushing to save thousands of Mozambicans before flood levels rise further, but with four helicopters, a handful of boats and extremely difficult conditions, have only been able to save about 413 so far.

“I don’t even know if we’ve made a dent. There are just so many people. The scale is huge. We’re busy doing the best we can,” said Travis Trower from Rescue South Africa, adding that a lot of people had been washed away but those still alive, whom he had seen from helicopter flights, were in a very bad state.

More than 400 sq kilometres (150 sq miles) in the region are flooded, according to satellite images taken by the EU, and in some places the water is six metres (19ft) deep. At least 600,000 people are affected, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), ranging from those whose lives are in immediate danger to those who need other kinds of aid.

About 40 percent of the District’s lower-income neighborhoods experienced gentrification between 2000 and 2013, giving the city the greatest “intensity of gentrification” of any in the country, according to a studyreleased Tuesday by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

The District also saw the most African American residents — more than 20,000 — displaced from their neighborhoods during that time, mostly by affluent, white newcomers, researchers said. The District and Philadelphia were most “notable” for displacements of black residents, while Denver and Austin had the most Hispanic residents move. Nationwide, nearly 111,000 African Americans and more than 24,000 Hispanics moved out of gentrifying neighborhoods, the study found.

In an essay accompanying the study, Sabiyha Prince of Empower DC said the city “rolled out the proverbial red carpet” for tens of thousands of new residents in the past five years. But the new dog parks, bike lanes, condominiums and pricey restaurants that followed, she said, are not viewed as improvements by long-term residents, who can feel isolated because of losing neighbors, social networks and local businesses. Prince, an anthropologist, said longtime Washingtonians tell stories of “alienation and vulnerability in the nation’s capital.”